


Berlin tales

by giurochedadomani



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, and a canon character 'fuck I thought that you were dead', it has a canon character dead, tagging it as graphic for brief mentions to both, the spy au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 14:04:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21016991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giurochedadomani/pseuds/giurochedadomani
Summary: “Where you aware that he was an intelligence operative?”Badum— thud. Reality screeches to a halt. Crowley’s mind reboots, scratching like one of his beloved CDs.“Well, he was. A British operative, specifically, though his allegiance is still up for debate”, his light tone is betrayed by a long, pregnant pause. Crowley feels a burning lick of cold going down his spine. He wonders if he has misheard the inflection on allegiance.___________In which Ezra Fell is the softest field agent in the MI6 and Anthony J. Crowley still asks too many questions (and keeps lots of bad companies).





	Berlin tales

“You still haven’t explained to us what type of relationship did you have with him”. 

Crowley blinks, then blinks again, as he slowly makes through his pulsing headache the face of the policeman in front of him out of the harsh light of the cell. Reality is fake, fuzzy, faded away around the edges. He’s vaguely aware that his wrists hurt, that his head throbs and that sniffling is rather more painful than usual. “He was a good client, had a taste for the expensive stuff”, says some other entity that has his exact tone of voice. 

His mind is entirely elsewhere. 

Surrounded by images of fire and destruction. 

“There’s not much to explain besides that, officer”. 

Ezra himself had made sure of that. He had said loud and clear that he wouldn’t help him, that he was being ridiculous and that they were not even friends and oh, how that had send Crowley storming off in a rage. 

And now he’s— now,  _ because of Crowley’s fault _ , he’s— 

( _ They are in the poor lit backroom of his shitty, crowded bar and Crowley’s crowding Ezra against the door, his lips crashing together, a shudder going through his spine when the other’s hands tangle in his hair, rest in his neck, and cradle him nearer. _

_ Until they gently push him away.  _

_ “I can’t do this”, Ezra says. Confesses, more like. Softly and looking elsewhere but at Crowley, who has a desperate need to ask if he’s talking about the Arrangement, staying in Berlin or kissing him _ ). 

“Where you aware that he was an intelligence operative?” 

_ Badum— thud _ . Reality screeches to a halt. Crowley’s mind reboots, scratching like one of his beloved CDs. 

“Well, he was. A British operative, specifically, though his allegiance is still up for debate”, his light tone is betrayed by a long, pregnant pause. Crowley feels a burning lick of cold going down his spine. He wonders if he has misheard the inflection on  _ allegiance _ . 

He sniffles. It hurts like hell. It also clears his head. 

“...Do I stand accused of something?”

The officer is kind of older than him, perhaps on his fifties. Surprisingly well dressed, his uniform in pristine condition. He has a face like it came from the movies, all sharp cheeks and a strong jawline and cold, violet eyes. He looks—  _ familiar _ , though Crowley is convinced that he hasn't ever been subjected to that calculating look. He hears the distant sirens of his mind’s inner workings starting to blear off, muted in the background. 

“It seems that he had gone rogue these past few weeks. We are now trying to reconstruct what happened”, which judging by his tone is a mild inconvenience in a sea of pure bliss, which shouldn't set Crowley on the edge but does. “Given that he was such a good patron of yours, perhaps you could give us a, well, general direction in which to look at?”

The smile that he gives to Crowley, it looks like a robot’s. Too perfect to be true, just like his German. 

“A general direction to look at”, Crowley repeats, slowly. He swallows. It tastes like ash. 

“Yes. Did something struck you as odd? Perhaps his behaviour shifted in some way during these past days, showing, I don’t know, sudden anger or nervousness?” 

Ezra had called him in a rush, talking about rendezvous places, bikes and some of his old, very battered Bible in some mix of accelerated, nervous chatter. Crowley hadn’t been able to make sense of half of it before he heard Ligur’s gun clocking at his back. 

And now he's—  _ Ezra is— _

(“_EZRA,_ _WHERE ARE YOU?_”). 

“I hardly knew the guy well enough to pinpoint if he was a weirdo as usual, or only on special occasions”.

“There’s security footage of him leaving your establishment at six in the morning”. 

Crowley leans back as far as the handcuffs let him, sprawling over the chair. He tries to plant his feet strongly on the ground so his legs don’t fidget. 

“I have—”, he winces. “Had a bar, not a nunnery”.

The officer nods. 

“Did he frequent bad companies?”

Crowley tries to ignore the sudden ball of dread in his throat as the distinctive memory of Ezra giving Anathema fake, British papers comes to his mind (she had come to his bar the night before she fled to the train station with her guy, name already changed to Anne, British accent almost perfect, dressed into tight, ripped jeans and makeup goth enough to belong in Candem. Crowley had been—  _ so proud _ ). 

“What type of bar do you think that I managed?”

Crowley's mouth twitches, only to fall when the policeman says, not a single inflection in his voice: “You stand accused of resistance against authority and public disorder. That is, exclusively if you want to. I could have a talk with my colleagues, check if it really was  _ you _ after all who they were supposed to arrest tonight”. 

It seems as if he’s talking about the weather. As if they are discussing how the FC Köln had fared in the Bundesliga over a nice, big, glass of beer in some bar in Kreuzberg. Crowley can feel his heart on his throat. 

“Already told you pretty much all the details, sir. Good client, had a lot of cash. Said he worked for the British embassy”, he tries a careful nonchalant shrug. “Promoting the British books for her Majesty or whatever”.

“Did you know that he had at least killed two people since he came to Berlin?” 

No. 

Ezra did have a fairly large body count, but it had been Crowley and not him the one who has murdered Ligur (had struggled against him, fought with teeth and nails to get the upper hand and grab the pistol, and then had gone into such a shock when the shot had reverberated through the room that he had struggled to realize that the blood staining his clothes was not his own, let alone notice Hastur screaming at the top of his lungs). 

“It seems that he was involved in something called the ‘Doomsday Option”. 

Hastur is alive, somewhere. He’d feel it in his bones if that arsonist cockroach hadn’t made it, it would tinge the image of his bar burning ( _ “EZRA, I CAN'T FIND YOU” _ ) with the sweet splendor of vengeance. 

“What was he doing in your bar at the moment of the explosion?”

Crowley only realizes that he has crossed his arms at some point because of how painfully he's digging his nails on his sides. He glares at the officer. 

“All I know it’s that his name is—”, he swallows thickly, “—was, Ezra Fell. And I’m pretty sure that even that was fake”. 

And that he’s dead. And that it’s— his fault. 

He wonders what would have worked, what exactly would he have to have said to get Ezra to go out of Berlin with him, what he have to have done to save him the only time that it actually mattered. All the tiny mistakes that he committed that ultimately lead to the love of his life dying in the flames that consumed his bar and then getting arrested, so he can finish fucking things up by snitching on their friends. 

The officer pinches the bridge of his nose, then sighs. Finally, he stands up. 

“We are going to do one thing”, he starts, already walking towards the door. Crowley wonders briefly if he’s going to be handed over to the Gestapo. “You are going to sleep tonight in a cell, see if that refreshes any memories”. He stops for a moment, adds over his shoulder: “Conspiration is nasty business, Crowley. So is spying”.

The door closes with a thud loud and definitive, like a sentence. 

He’s definitely getting handed over to the Gestapo.

He wonders briefly if he’s going to disappear, or if they’ll throw his body out, to be found getting carried away by the waters of the Spree. If Anne and her beloved Newt will get away before he breaks down and says something. If someone will take his place helping people flee to the West. He ponders—

He ponders —if anything, he’ll take solace in that— if they are truly so desperate as to have the highest intelligence official of the United Kingdom in the country interrogate him personally. 

( _ “I think that the word that you are searching for is ‘Arschloch”. _

_ Ezra blushes up to his hair roots. _

_ “That’s definitely not the word I’m searching”, Ezra tells him, so appalled. “My boss is— He is—”. _

_ Crowley grins, wickedly.  _

_ “Come on, tell me exactly what you think of your boss. Let me give you some tips. He’s—” _

_ “Anthony, stop”. _

_ “He’s ein Arschloch. Ein Flachwichser. Ein Arschgeiger. Ein Idiot”.  _

_ Ezra snorts half his cocktail and Crowley’s so, so very happy that he can make him laugh that hard.  _

_ “Anthony, please. I don’t even know what half of them actually mean!”  _

_ “I don’t believe for a second that you have been living in Berlin on and off for years and that you still don’t know how to curse”.  _

_ “That’s because I’m a gentleman. You’ve told me often enough”.  _

_ “You're a pious prick. That's what you are. And a little bit of a bastard, too. Just like your boss” _ ).

Crowley almost jumps out of his skin when the door of his cell suddenly opens, only to be surprised and mildly disappointed when only an old, very bored policeman appears. He has noticed him at the entrance, doing clerk work at the front office. It looks as if the most dangerous thing he has faced during his career is an angry driver with a ticket. 

“You’ve got a call”, he says, signaling him to follow him. “Says he’s your lawyer”. 

“I don’t have—”. 

“Do you really want to refuse?”

Crowley stops on his tracks and stares, giving again a once over to the policeman. Suspicion grows on Crowley like a fungus. He’s getting paranoid enough to be sure that he’s seeing the officer’s mouth twitching up under the thick moustache, as if amused. 

Though he figures that he doesn’t really have anything else to lose, he follows the policeman half expecting to be bludgeon half way through the call room. 

Effectively, there’s an unhooked telephone there. 

He picks it up, tentatively. 

“Crowley? Is it you?”

Crowley cannot breathe. Reality zooms in his ragged breath, the wild beating of his heart and the voice at the other side of the line. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you let me watch 'Atomic Blonde' way too many times: I start wondering what a Good Omens AU would look like. In special, how the story would play out if Aziraphale were in place of Charlize Theron's character, that is, if he was the best field agent in the MI6 but also exactly like he is in Good Omens, that is, a god awful liar. 
> 
> Then Crowley took over my text because I just couldn't not do this scene. 
> 
> I'm also @thebassisofoptimism in tumblr, come say hi!


End file.
